In January, we released our 2018-19 annual report!
The report includes insights into the motor industry, with reference to jobseekers – for example, salary information, insights into your job search, category profiles and your interest in the roles available on our site. We also delved into challenges for the industry in 2020 and how we as a jobs board will move forward in the new year to improve InAutomotive for our users.
Another area we collected insights on in the report included gender insights. This report produced interesting data into the jobs that were browsed more by men or women:
According to Arnold Clark’s website, just 33% of the automotive industry are women. The automotive industry is one of the most famously male-dominated work environments. It’s been male dominated for years, particularly in sales and management positions, and aspects like this are more than likely to drive a gender gap, it has been suggested.
The following roles are just a snippet of the categories we looked at in the report.
- Sales
- Servicing and Repairs
- Aftersales
- Bodyshop
- Driving
Sales – Male 71.36% : 28.64% Female
When comparing the above figures to the report we produced in 2018, the percentage of females was slightly less than it is in 2019 at 17.84%. This would suggest an improvement in interest from women considering getting into sales roles in the automotive industry, a role typically dominated by men.
Servicing and Repairs – Male 70.02% : 29.98% Female
Comparing the above figures to 2018 results, the split appears to be similar in 2019. In 218, AM Online posted a report highlighting that female mechanics now account for 10% of the workforce, with the number working in the UK rising by 125% since 2011, a positive sign that women are growing more interested in these more technical, manual jobs. 93% of garages surveyed also indicated a positive impact from their females mechanic team, demonstrating the value of female mechanics.
Aftersales – Male 69.23% : 30.77% Female
The split of interest in Aftersales roles is similar to Sales roles, and again we saw a slight improvement from 2018, when just 26.83% of females browsed Aftersales jobs.
Bodyshop – Male 73.68% : 26.32% Female
Again, these figures proved similar to the 2018 report, which claimed the male to female interest was (male) 74.89% to 25.11% (female).
Driving – Male 82.43% : 17.57% Female
In 2018, our report suggested that 84.05% of males were searching for driving jobs as opposed to 15.95% of women. Many have suggested the reason for the lack of female participation in the automotive industry is that men like to work with things, whereas women like to work with people.
In 2018 we posted a blog on behalf of International Women’s Day, which further discussed the lack of female representation within the industry. There were some organisations however who were ahead of the curve in addressing this, to ensure that more talent, regardless of gender, is entering the industry.
The automotive industry’s trade body, the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI), is headed up by Lesley Woolley. And as an organisation, the IMI has a 60% to 40% female to male split.
Our partners, ABP Club said: “Women’s Automotive – in a highly male dominated industry – drives equality with a firm belief in full and inclusive participation, regardless of gender.”
Some of the more interesting results we found from this gender report included the percentage of men who were interested in Automotive HR roles, and the staggering lack of women interested in Warehousing roles (0%). Dealership roles, however did seem to attract more interest from women in 2019 (39.21%) as opposed to 2018 (29.77%).
